Path 2

Path 2

Rave On!

July 2, 2002

Corporate raves are so much fun. I love the way they co-opt youth culture, giving away goodies like laminates and glow sticks imprinted with their logos. I especially love it when security guards search your every pocket like you’re Osama bin Laden, and how the only beverage on offer is that of the sponsor. Corporate raves rule! Sike! The Sm*****f Experience, held two Thursdays ago at the Metropolitan Pavilion, found confused clubbers Juan C (of Foundation), Hosi Simon (Flyer mag), and Shawn Schwartz (Halcyon) standing in the too big and too brightly lit space.

Though every DJ on the impressive roster showed up—even the enigmatic and erratic Detroit techno DJ Derrick May arrived on time—the DJs’ best records couldn’t save the event from itself. There weren’t enough people to fill the three gargantuan rooms with terrible acoustics (Gilles Peterson playing Brazilian beats in an echo chamber is a painful experience), and the crowd itself was a funky assortment of buttoned-up businessmen, glow-stick-wielding ravers, and wasted frat boys.

Upstairs, the smallest, hottest room with the worst music (bland progressive house and trance) was also the most packed. “I feel like I’m at the prom!” said Jaime Perlman of Vogue. “No, it’s a rave-prom! Would you like to dance?” she giggled. It was quite an “experience,” but probably not the sort that Sm*****f bargained for.

Jazzbo‘s Monday party at the Park was a wild one. Celebrating the release of his underground hip-hop comp, Constant Elevation (Astralwerks), sometime Voice scribe Joey Patel (responsible for the influential Deep Concentration comp a few years ago) mingled with Attack of the Clones‘ Hayden Christensen and Monday-night regular Famke Janssen while Steinski and Prince Paul played hip-hop hits for the heavies. Co-promoted by Vice magazine and Matt Goias, the party was crashed by Rocawear’s Damon Dash, singer Macy Gray, and actress Heather Matarazzo, some of whom had been at Entertainment Weekly‘s “It” party (see José Germosén’s “Homeboys on the Range”). The omnipresent Moby took advantage of the hot weather and the hot tub by playing splish-splash with a gaggle of fully clothed models. (They played Who Can Hold Their Breath Underwater the Longest.)

Clubbed! The Water Street Bar, the DUMBO bar and restaurant-turned-club space, may be out of the disco business. A new biweekly Saturday party, Neon Nights, put on by Graham Connolly and Malathion Events, was bumped the day before it was scheduled to start. The reason, says one source: The building’s tenants, one of whom is a lawyer, are completely fed up with the noise, and are pressuring their landlord to halt the venue’s music events. (See Toni Schlesinger’s May 28 Shelter column for a detailed account of their fury.) But club co-owner Sean Davis says that soundproofing had simply not been finished.

“The landlord had told us that if we had any [noise] problems, he’d come down hard on us,” said Davis. He added that the Department of Environmental Protection has done eight readings for noise levels and has found no violation.

Connolly says the show—which was moved to FUN and featured electro sensation Tiga—nevertheless “went off without a hitch.” He is shopping for a new venue to hold the party in, in the meantime.

As for 66 Water Street, Davis says it may stick to jazz and comedy for now. “We need to find our feet,” said Davis. “We might just stay out of the hot water for a while.”

Spotted: superstar trance DJs Seb Fontaine and Dave Ralph crying in their beer with Formula PR’s in-house Brit, Cameron Macphail, at the Sporting Club on Hudson Street, after watching the doomed England-versus-Brazil match. “We lost,” sighed Cameron. Like all good Brits, Dave and Seb are avid football fans: The former loves Liverpool, and the latter takes matters into his own hands as goalie for the Cream team at the annual celebrity five-side tourney at Creamfields U.K. Said Cammy, who witnessed last year’s final, “Cream were unlucky. The Metalheadz robbed ’em.”